Year of the Woman Lecture Series: Taboo Tarheels

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Although black-white interracial marriage was legalized in the US in 1967, the percentage of interracial marriages remains low even to this day. When we look back at history, it is clear that taboos and norms created to separate the races in the past still influence our society today.

Many people have seen the racist propaganda, whether from newspapers, broadsides, books, and even movies, that was used to divide black and white North Carolinians during Reconstruction and into the 20th century. Jim Crow-era stereotypes highlighted the purity of white womanhood and demonized black manhood. If we look further back, however portrayals of black-white relationships in the Antebellum period paint a different picture.

Join us to explore the relationships of white women and black men in the North Carolina Piedmont prior to the Civil War and learn how society reacted to these taboo interactions. Documented examples of interracial relationships show that despite social taboos and laws designed to discourage it, in some cases, these relationships survived against all odds.